number pads for laptops

[MICHAEL WEAVER]

Hi Bill!
Thanks for your reply to my questions.
I am pretty much a Linux newby plus I have the additional problem of having 
no Sight at all.
>From hearing what the chap at my Linux group did, it sounded fairly straight 
forward to download Gnopernicus screenreader. I thought it would have been a 
lot more complex than it turned out to be although for some reason it seems 
to have broken in my system because I get an error message saying "no 
speech."
My younger sister tried to resolve the problem but she couoldn't find the 
fault although she hasn't had any Linux experience and for example shutting 
down a computer under Linux is different from shutting down Windows and it 
is not like being able to do Control Escape, U and pressing enter.
I bought my Compaq laptop sometime near the end of last year, PC World 
claimed it was the last of its model number and it was being used for 
demonstrations until I bought it for Ubuntu so hopefully it should have a 
USB keyboard for a separate keypad. Gnopernicus uses a lot of conbination 
keystrokes which seem to be only found on Numeric pads and this chap who 
helped get me running only had some success with using the laptop with these 
layers and it was a bit fiddly because you have to change by doing something 
like FN and numlock or scroll key to access the kind of keystrokes used for 
Gnopernicus and it might have been when he tried to access one of the layers 
using this method when Gnopernicus stopped running and gave up any attempt 
to speak even when I rebooted from scratch.
My sister looked at some stuff under the preferences menu or where the 
Gnopernicus stuff is and it said that speech was unavailable so some module 
or file has either got corrupted or broken so I am wondering if I will again 
have to do a full fresh installation of Ubuntu and reconfigure the system to 
access the Main reposotory where the Gnopernicus application is.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Bill Marcum" <bmarcum at iglou.com>
To: <ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com>
Sent: Friday, March 10, 2006 3:08 AM
Subject: Re: number pads for laptops


> On Tue, 7 Mar 2006 03:51:29 -0000, MICHAEL WEAVER
>  <michaelweaver1 at btinternet.com> wrote:
>> The other problem is that it does require a numeric pad.
>> If I bought one for my Compaq laptop, where would I plug it in,
>
> In the USB port, unless you have an old laptop without USB.  If you have
> other USB devices you might need a hub.
>
>> would it
>> automatically be detected in Ubuntu and will it give me access to
>> Gnopernicus commands which are key layers?
>> Can I also change my Hostname without having to do a full installation?
> You just need to change /etc/hostname and /etc/hosts.
>
>> Also I notice on this list the mention of Dappa. It seems to be mentioned 
>> in
>> the installation guide for Ubuntu but I notice that it isn't out yet and
>> that it mentions April being the due month for release on the Ubuntu 
>> site.
>> What puzzles me is why it is now refered to in the installation guide, 
>> how
>> people have been able to obtain it before the release date and yet it 
>> isn't
>> on the download link of the Ubuntu site.
>>
> Until it is released, Dapper is the testing version of Ubuntu.  You can
> upgrade an Ubuntu system to dapper by:
> change "breezy" to "dapper" in /etc/apt/sources.list
> sudo aptitude update
> sudo aptitude dist-upgrade
> Or you can wait until April and download the iso's or order the CDs.
>
>
> -- 
> Fortune finishes the great quotations, #3
> Birds of a feather flock to a newly washed car.
>
>
> -- 
> ubuntu-users mailing list
> ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com
> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-users